Audrey

In the moment in which she sprang to her feet she saw that it was not

Hugon, and her heart grew calm again. In her torn gown, with her brown

hair loosed from its fastenings, and falling over her shoulders in heavy

waves whose crests caught the sunlight, she stood against the tree beneath

which she had lain, gazed with wide-open eyes at the intruder, and guessed

from his fine coat and the sparkling toy looping his hat that he was a

gentleman. She knew gentlemen when she saw them: on a time one had cursed

her for scurrying like a partridge across the road before his horse,

making the beast come nigh to unseating him; another, coming upon her and

the Widow Constance's Barbara gathering fagots in the November woods, had

tossed to each a sixpence; a third, on vestry business with the minister,

had touched her beneath the chin, and sworn that an she were not so brown

she were fair; a fourth, lying hidden upon the bank of the creek, had

caught her boat head as she pushed it into the reeds, and had tried to

kiss her.

They had certain ways, had gentlemen, but she knew no great harm

of them. There was one, now--but he would be like a prince. When at

eventide the sky was piled with pale towering clouds, and she looked, as

she often looked, down the river, toward the bay and the sea beyond, she

always saw this prince that she had woven--warp of memory, woof of

dreams--stand erect in the pearly light. There was a gentleman indeed!

As to the possessor of the title now slowly and steadily making his way

toward her she was in a mere state of wonder. It was not possible that he

had lost his way; but if so, she was sorry that, in losing it, he had

found the slender zigzag of her path. A trustful child,--save where Hugon

was concerned,--she was not in the least afraid, and being of a friendly

mind looked at the approaching figure with shy kindliness, and thought

that he must have come from a distant part of the country. She thought

that had she ever seen him before she would have remembered it.

Upon the outskirts of the ring, clear of the close embrace of flowering

bush and spreading vine. Haward paused, and looked with smiling eyes at

this girl of the woods, this forest creature that, springing from the

earth, had set its back against the tree.

"Tarry awhile," he said. "Slip not yet within the bark. Had I known, I

should have brought oblation of milk and honey."